Hard Virtualization of P4-based switches with VirtP4

Abstract

We present VirtP4, a conceptual architecture for hard (type-1) virtualization of P4-based switch programs in a NetFPGA SUME board. In contrast to existing (type-2) solutions like Hyper4, HyperVDP, and P4Visor, our design does not require access to switch source code (either for merging or custom compilation). We thus preserve the intellectual property of switch programs, while providing near line-rate performance for virtual switch instances.